Thin films are employed in a variety of fields, including photovoltaics, electronics and advanced coatings for providing resistance to corrosive and/or high wear environments. Accordingly, thin film structure and properties vary according to specific application. In many cases, thin film structure is a balance of multiple properties. For example, electrode thin films of photoelectrochemical cells (PEC) are required to exhibit sufficient light absorption, carrier collection and desirable mass transport properties of reactants. Developing thin film architectures meeting these requirements can be difficult and expensive to fabricate. Expensive materials are often used in conjunction with time consuming techniques, such as photolithographic methods, dry reactive etching and physical vapor deposition (PVD) of metals. Such fabrication requirements are often not scalable and are cost prohibitive at the commercial level.